Meles from Bari

ό Μέλης in signature of son Argyros

Detail from the star mantle with part of the marginal inscription (C) ESAR HENRI (CE)

Meles (* 10th century; † April 23, 1020 in Bamberg ), also Melus or Melo , Greek Μέλης, was an Apulian separatist who organized two uprisings against Byzantine rule. It was probably invested by Emperor Heinrich II as Duke of Apulia on Easter 1020 in Bamberg in the presence of Pope Benedict VIII .

He belonged to the local Apulian leadership in Bari . According to the testimony of William of Apulia , he was a Longobard who outwardly followed the Byzantine fashion. In any case, through his wife Maralda and his brother-in-law Dattus he was connected to the Lombard nobility. The fact that Meles could have belonged to the Armenian population group in Puglia is seen as a possibility because of the occasional occurrence of the name. By 1000, however, the Armenians had already joined the Lombard right group. A Saracen descent can be excluded.

The first attempt to give military expression to the discontent of the Apulian subjects of the Basileus brought some victories against the Byzantine troops in 1009, but ended in 1010 with the defeat against the Katepan Basilios Mesardonites. The leaders withdrew to Lombard territory. In 1012 the family that remained in Bari were deported to Constantinople, from where Argyros was able to return in 1029.

Benedict VIII hired Norman mercenaries and sent them to Meles in Apulia in early 1017 at the latest. Their leader Rainulf later became the first independent Norman prince as Count von Aversa. In the spring of 1017 Meles invaded northern Apulia with this Norman contingent and Lombard troops and was able to advance victoriously. Only the successor of Tornikios Kontoleon succeeded in stopping the rebels. After the defeat at Canne against the Katepan Basilios Boioannes in October 1018, Meles left Apulia. Nothing is known about his stay until he appeared at the Bamberg meeting between the emperor and the pope. As a gift he presented to Caesar today in Bamberg Diocesan Museum kept Sternenmantel on which the customer called Ismahel is named, which is unknown in the Byzantine and southern Italian sources. The identity between Meles and Ismahel is expressly attested by a diploma from Heinrich III. for his son Argyros from 1054 with the promise that no other burials should take place in his grave in Bamberg Cathedral . It can no longer be determined whether this promise should serve to prepare a German intervention in Apulia, in which the Norman troops increasingly took power.

literature

• Jean-Claude Cheynet: Pouvoir et contestations à Byzance (963-1210) (= Publications de la Sorbonne. Series Byzantina Sorbonensia. Vol. 9). Reimpression. Publications de la Sorbonne Center de Recherches d'Histoire et de Civilization Byzantines, Paris 1996, ISBN 2-85944-168-5 , p. 35 No. 18.
• Francesca Luzzati Laganà: Meles (Melo) v. Bari . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 6, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-7608-8906-9 , column 492 f.
• Horst Enzensberger : Bamberg and Apulia. In: Christine and Klaus van Eickels (eds.): The Bamberg diocese in the world of the Middle Ages (= Bamberg interdisciplinary medieval studies. Lectures and lectures. Volume 1). University of Bamberg Press, Bamberg 2007, ISBN 978-3-923507-28-3 , pp. 141-150. ( Digitized version )
• Berardo Pio :  Melo da Bari. In: Mario Caravale (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 73:  Meda-Messadaglia. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2009.

Web links

• Bamberg and Apulia - Web version of a critical lecture in the 2007 lecture series: The Bamberg Diocese in the Middle Ages by Horst Enzensberger

Remarks

1. ^ D H. III. 322: ... in tumulo, in quo praedicti Ismahel ducis Apuliae qui et Melo vocabatur, ossa clauduntur "in the grave in which the bones of the aforementioned Ismahel, the Duke of Apulia, who is also called Meles, are enclosed"